‘Presumably,’ said Burden, but John Hood was not at work. He was waiting for them at the police station, fuming at the delay, and threatening ‘if something wasn’t done at once’ to take his grievances to the Chief Constable, even to the Home Office.

‘Something is being done,’ said Wexford quietly. ‘I’m glad you’ve come here, Mr Hood. But try to keep calm, will you, please?’

It was apparent to Wexford from the first that John Hood was in a different category of intelligence from that of Kingman and Corinne Last. He was a thick-set man of perhaps no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with bewildered, resentful blue eyes in a puffy flushed face. A man, Wexford thought, who would fling out rash accusations he couldn’t substantiate, who would be driven to bombast and bluster in the company of the ex-teacher and that clever subtle woman.

He began to talk now, not wildly, but still without restraint, repeating what he had said to Burden, reiterating, without putting forward any real evidence, that his brother-in-law had meant to kill his sister that night. It was only by luck that she had survived. Kingman was a ruthless man who would have stopped at nothing to be rid of her. He, Hood, would never forgive himself that he hadn’t made a stand and called the doctor.

‘Yes, yes, Mr Hood, but what exactly were your sister’s symptoms?’

‘Vomiting and stomach pains, violent pains,’ said Hood.

‘She complained of nothing else?’

‘Wasn’t that enough? That’s what you get when someone feeds you poisonous rubbish.’

Wexford merely raised his eyebrows. Abruptly, he left the events of that evening and said, ‘What had gone wrong with your sister’s marriage?’

Before Hood replied, Wexford could sense he was keeping something back. A wariness came into his eyes and then was gone. ‘Axel wasn’t the right person for her,’ he began. ‘She had problems, she needed understanding, she wasn’t . . .’ His voice trailed away.

‘Wasn’t what, Mr Hood? What problems?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with all this,’ Hood muttered.

‘I’ll be the judge of that. You made this accusation, you started this business off. It’s not for you now to keep anything back.’ On a sudden inspiration, Wexford said, ‘Had these problems anything to do with the money she was spending?’

Hood was silent and sullen. Wexford thought rapidly over the things he had been told – Axel Kingman’s fanaticism on one particular subject, Hannah’s desperate need of an unspecified kind of support during the early days of her marriage. Later on, her alternating moods, and then the money, the weekly sums of money spent and unaccounted for.

He looked up and said baldly, ‘Was your sister an alcoholic, Mr Hood?’

Hood hadn’t liked this directness. He flushed and looked affronted. He skirted round a frank answer. Well, yes, she drank. She was at pains to conceal her drinking. It had been going on more or less consistently since her first marriage broke up.

‘In fact, she was an alcoholic,’ said Wexford.